one question that we get a lot at YC is how to find a technical co-founder this is how I would think through this problem first I would start with your friends um how many of your friends do you really enjoy talking to and who know how to write code and even better write code every day is a primary part of
their job I advise that you actually make a list of all of these people rank the top five and then make those people real offers a lot of what happens is that people have friends they might want to start companies with but they feel uncomfortable asking they think oh well my friend works at Google or he makes
this big salary or she's up for a promotion I don't think they're ever going to want to do if you don't ask you'll never know and your friend might be at a job waiting to leave but no one's asking them or let's be more more clear they're friend isn't asking them to come and let's and let's start
something the part of asking someone to start a company though is to make them an offer like how much salary can you pay them if anything how much Equity are you willing to give them so you don't want to make have an informal conversation you actually want to make them a real offer hey um Samantha I'd
like you to be my co-founder I'd like to give you 40% of the company we've only raised a small amount of money so I can't afford to pay you much but as soon as we you raise more I'm happy to pay you this salary that's what it takes a real offer not like hey can you help me with my project on the weekends or hey
would you be interested or hey would you just code this on the side for me everyone's asking Engineers to do that type of work and it's often the not very good way to recruit a technical co-founder okay after we work through friends let's say that no there no one on the list that um says yes or you
can't build a list you friends who know how to write code the next group of people to think about is co-workers go through the same exact process with the people that you work with at work people you like people you get along with figure out who they are make a list rank it make real
offers now let's say no one at work and know one your friends the next thing you have to think about is how do I build a network with software engineers in it the often best way to do this is to go get another job to go work at a technology company where software Engineers work now a lot of times people
get on this route they think oh I need to work at a big company like Google or Facebook unfortunately if you're not technical a lot of the time when you work at these big companies you are kept far away from engineering and so it's a lot harder to become friends with Engineers so counterintuitively or maybe
intuitively depending how you think about it the best way to build an engineering network and to become friends with more Engineers is to work at a technology startup you know to work at a small company that's 50 people or less where everyone's sitting together talking together having lunch together
and interacting with each other and doing work together by making friends with those co-workers by making friends with their friends you'll start building your network and you can start figuring out who you might consider working with now sometimes that does take longer you know it might take a year or two working
at that company before you have the network and you find the people you want to work with but remember doing a startup can be a whole life's work so if it takes a couple years to get started in the scheme of things if this is something you're doing for 10 plus years that's probably worth it one more thing
that you can consider is learning how to code there are a lot more res resources online right now that can help you learn how to code everything from code academy to Lambda school and a whole bunch of other products so you can always go that direction if you're inclined one last note before I close if you're a college
student one thing you should understand is that one of the best places to find future co-founders is in college by all means if you ever think that you might want to create a startup one day and you don't know how to code one thing I would advise you to do is make friends with people who are
learning how to code in school um they might turn out to be your future co-founder 125 5 10 years from now um I was extremely lucky I was friends with Justin Con in college um he was working he was learning how to code and working in a startup and he was friends with another guy named emit cheer who was a
great software engineer and when they decided to do a company called Justin TV I was friends with them they recruited me and Bam I had two amazing co-founders directly from school um college is a massively massively used opportunity to find co-founders and you shouldn't uh forget that thank you very much